


Hold Me, Darling, Listen Closely To Me

by luninosity



Series: Oh Boy! Or, Life's Better With A Buddy Holly Soundtrack [6]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Comfort, Commitment, Committed Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Nightmares, protective!Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which James still has nightmares, and Michael tries to help. Also, there's mention of pistachio ice cream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Me, Darling, Listen Closely To Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shayzgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shayzgirl/gifts).



> Part of the series, though you don't have to've read the rest before reading this one. Title, opening, and closing lines from Buddy Holly's "Listen To Me."
> 
> For [shayzgirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shayzgirl/pseuds/shayzgirl), who wanted to know what happened when they went back to the hotel after [The Little Things You Say And Do](http://archiveofourown.org/works/660050). Chronologically, this one takes place immediately after that and sometime before [And We'll Know Why, Just You And I](http://archiveofourown.org/works/692728). (I should probably rewrite the latter somewhat, come to think of it, after certain events at the end of this one...) 
> 
> There's at least one more of these planned at the moment (don't worry, person who requested that one! it'll happen!); this whole universe, of course, is based on requests, so if you have a prompt you'd like to see in this series, let me know...

  
_listen to me and hold me tight_  
 _and you will see our love so right_  
 _hold me, darling_  
 _listen closely to me…_

  
A bad night. A bad night, and Michael can’t do anything about it, can only hold James, helplessly, through the shivering.  
  
He wants to do something about it. To do anything about it. Anything at all.  
  
He strokes hair out of one frightened eyebrow, gently, and whispers, “I’m here, I’m here, it’s all right,” and hates himself a little for letting James talk him into this, letting them stay in the hotel when the secure haven of their flat’s only twenty minutes distant.  
  
He knows better. Knows that James’s nightmares, as much as they might hopefully possibly maybe be lessening these days, with Michael’s arms around him in the dark, can nevertheless be triggered by unfamiliar surroundings, eerily shadowed shapes like ominous tall night-haunts surrounding a bed in silence. He knows.  
  
He’d let James smile and tug him off to the splendid old hotel anyway, too flushed with love and relief and the euphoric ebbing of orgasm after that encounter in the cinema’s opulent men’s room, himself clinging to James’s hand as if he’d never let go, while blue eyes laughed and dismissed their own opening night as less important than the arrangement of an elaborate surprise involving Michael’s much-adored historic hotels and an enormous bed and mind-blowingly spectacular sex.  
  
And now they’re here.  
  
“James,” he murmurs, while James trembles against his chest, both of them naked and sitting in the center of that enormous bed, four-poster and solid and at the moment far too large and unreassuring. “Love. I’m here. You’re all right. I love you, you’re all right, you are, just breathe…”  
  
James nods, hair trailing along Michael’s face, kitten-soft and scented like apples. They’d showered; they’d had to, after the second round of the night, and then Michael’d been unable to resist steam-pinkened skin, all strawberry and ginger-cream, sparkling with uncaught droplets of water, and had bent James over the sink and fucked him again, there in front of the mirror, blue eyes reflecting huge and dark with desire as Michael took him, still shower-warm and pliant and beautifully open as the whole length of Michael’s cock plunged inside his body.  
  
They’d had to shower one more time. And he’d hoped, someplace inarticulate, not framed in words even in his own heart, that James would be worn out enough, exhausted and thoroughly pleasured enough, to sleep dreamlessly in his arms.  
  
If I’m that tired, James had said once. If I’m tired, or finally used to a place, it’s better, the first nights in new hotels’re always the hardest…  
  
It’s also random; James has said that too, whenever Michael’s asked how he’s been managing, all the years in their profession, new sets and new locations every few weeks. The nightmares don’t come every night, even when conditions suggest that they should; and then sometimes they sneak in without reason, when James is safe in Michael’s arms at home, and blow the peacefulness apart.  
  
He _does_ know. He couldn’t’ve helped the persistent tiny unfurling of hope, though, as James had drifted off first, cradled against his body. Maybe, maybe, this time, he’d done, or been, enough.  
  
He can’t help the bitter gnawing sensation around his heart now, either. What if he’s _never_ enough?  
  
James breathes in, a calmer sound this time, not the heartbreaking ragged inhales from moments ago. “…Michael?”  
  
“Yes? Still here. I’ve got you.” He tightens his hold, though carefully, for emphasis. Wonders whether James would feel better with a light on; wonders how he might conceivably manage to turn on a light without moving either arm.  
  
Softly, barely voiced, as if afraid the words’ll be met with rejection: “Thank you.”  
  
Those eyes are so very blue in the day. They’re streaked with shade right now, the greys and indigos of night. Whatever’s gnawing on Michael’s heart redoubles its efforts.  
  
“Don’t—you don’t need to thank me. Not for holding you. Do you want the lights on? Or…”  
  
“No.” James curls more closely into Michael’s body, folding up those long legs. They’re shorter than Michael’s own, of course, and well-muscled; James is built of compact freckled delight.  
  
Delight, and well-concealed pain.  
  
He’d never known, never even guessed, until that day that James had told him. James chose, then, and chooses every night now, to let him in past the concealment.  
  
“I love you,” he says, desperate.  
  
“I love you.” James tucks one foot beneath the closest blanket-mountain, then wiggles it in evident appreciation. “These’re very compassionate sheets.”  
  
“They…are?”  
  
“Mmm. Soft and cozy. They like keeping people comfortable. Are you comfortable?”  
  
“Um. Yes?” Physically, at least. “Are you?”  
  
“Yes.” And that’s a familiar expression, tiptoeing into view: the look in summer-jewel eyes that means James would quite like to be kissed but isn’t going to ask, so Michael leans down, gingerly, and touches his lips to those tempting ones.  
  
James tastes like warmth, and soft skin, and fear; like love, and the center of the universe’s spin, and coming home.  
  
“Nice,” James says, against his mouth.  
  
“Nice?” He kisses the tip of that freckled nose, for that. “Not the most complimentary of adjectives, you know, I’m not sure whether I should be trying harder…”  
  
“Oh. Marvelous, then. You always are. But nice, too. Like ice cream by the beach. In the summer.” James puts his head on Michael’s shoulder. “Pistachio ice cream.”  
  
“So,” Michael says, after a second, “I’m your dessert,” and James makes an amused sound. “I like pistachio ice cream.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“And I like you.”  
  
“I know that, too.” He adjusts their position, easing a hip into a more tenable long-term spot. The tall graceful posts of the bed watch them, inquisitive, noncommittal.  
  
He takes a deep breath, and ignores the wooden speculation. Asks the question he ought to’ve asked first. Before everything. Before they’d even made it to the room.  
  
“Do you want to leave? We can go home, it’s not that far, you know, I can check us out if you—”  
  
“Maybe.” James licks his lips, once, that habit he’s had as long as Michael’s known him, sweep of pink tongue across generous skin. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”  
  
“No. Don’t ever be sorry.” He squeezes James against him one more time. Then starts disentangling their legs, reluctant and not, unwilling to lose contact even for a second but wanting to get James home in as few of those seconds as possible. “We can be out of here in ten minutes. I’ll get the bags, and you just—get dressed, maybe? Whenever you feel like getting up?”  
  
“I think—are you not going to let me help pack, then?”  
  
“You think what? And…you can. If you want. But you don’t have to.” He’ll talk to the night clerk downstairs, too. James shouldn’t have to face any strangers. Not if he, Michael, can face them instead.  
  
He’s always considered himself a fairly confident, uncomplicated, happy person. Easily pleased with sunny days, music, birdsong, fast cars, life in general. He likes his life, likes getting to know all of his characters, connecting with them, intimately. Learning all their intricacies.  
  
James is wonderfully intricate. Complicated in ways that Michael might never figure out, and will always want to attempt. James smiles at the world, also genuinely happy as far as Michael can tell, and gets the whole world to sparkle back; James is equally content at home under a blanket with a crossword puzzle or a tattered science-fiction paperback, the scent of lemon-sugar cookies drifting through the air. James often has cold fingers, in the mornings, and smiles with startled appreciation every single time Michael wraps those fingers up in his.  
  
James is a perfect party host, he’s realized, having people over: the one of them who will spend time with every guest, leaving them all feeling individually welcomed and important, when Michael himself tends to get excited and converse enthusiastically at one person for ages. James, when a guest in other people’s homes, will make himself useful, slowly taking over all the small details, replenishing food, noticing emptied drinks, doing the washing-up in the kitchen, until the actual host—Benedict Cumberbatch, two weeks previously—finally notices that the wrong one of them’s been having the fun for the past several hours and grabs Michael and demands worriedly and drunkenly to know whether James is all right.  
  
Michael’d gone into the kitchen and found James, dishes finished, leaning idly against the counter with his head tipped in the direction of the party noise, listening affectionately but not moving to rejoin.  
  
“Love,” he’d said, and held out his arms, and James had come into them, willingly, smiling a very small smile that nearly shattered Michael’s heart. “People’re noticing. You’re missing.”  
  
James didn’t try to dismiss that statement with an excuse—the dishes, the food, his own unimportance to the raucous gathering—the way he might’ve, once. Only nodded, after a second, against Michael’s shoulder.  
  
“We can leave. If you’d rather be at home, with the first Lord of the Rings movie on—it’s on the television, by the way, right now, I noticed when people were flipping channels out there—or reading your next script, or baking something…something I can help you with…We can do that. Just tell me what you want.”  
  
James had considered this proposal for a second, and Michael’d been surprised by that too: he’d expected a protest, the observation that the polite thing to do’d be to continue being social, to stay, to drink all the colorful drinks, to be carried home.  
  
“It’s Benedict’s birthday…”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“So…we should stay. For a while. If we go join in whatever ridiculous thing he’s doing now…we could leave around two? Another hour?”  
  
“I think it involves a lot of tequila, his birthday cake, at least three other people, and balloons. So I’m not sure you want to join in, exactly. _I_ don’t want you to join in.”  
  
“Fair enough. I’ll watch and laugh, then.”  
  
“Yes,” Michael’d said again, and kissed him, lips to forehead. Had meant yes to all of that: to the compromise, to James being honest with him, to James laughing. He’ll always say yes to that.  
  
He starts to get up, swinging his legs toward the side of the bed; and then James says, softly, “No.”  
  
“No—oh, no, I’m sorry, did you want me to hold you longer, I can do that—”  
  
“Yes, actually.” Nearly laughing, now, a sudden baffling eruption of emotion. Michael folds long arms back around him, and is baffled, and in love. “But that’s not what I meant. We don’t have to check out.”  
  
“We…don’t? But—you—”  
  
“Me, yes.” James puts his arms around Michael in return. Their bodies complement each other so neatly, in the rumpled landscape of the sheets. Hills and valleys and ancient outposts, in the antique stronghold of wood and luxury.  
  
“James,” he attempts, still confused, “I love you.”  
  
“And I love you. And I arranged this for you, to surprise you.” Those eyes’re very blue, not unwounded but steady, gazing into his. “I want to be able to give you this. I don’t want to give up and give in and go home. I want to be able to sleep beside you, anywhere, and feel safe. Or at least—” One corner of that mouth quirks up, crooked self-commentary. “I do absolutely feel safe with you, when I wake up, once I do wake up. So if I’m going to be having those dreams regardless, might as well face them here. With you.”  
  
“James,” Michael says, and kisses him again, and then shuts his eyes and rests his cheek atop all that hair. One loop of it frisks up to tickle his ear. “You…first, I love you. And you’re magnificent. In your movie, and here…”  
  
“And in a men’s room of an overly decorated cinema?”  
  
“There, too. All the time. But…please don’t be angry with me…you know you don’t have to—to be brave, about this. Not for me. I know you have—I know you don’t sleep well. You told me. You trusted me with that. Your dreams.”  
  
Always the same, James’d said. That nameless towering man-shaped figure, standing over him, waiting for him to move or make a sound or breathe too loudly. Michael can’t even imagine that kind of fear.  
  
But he doesn’t have to. He’s seen it. He’s seen James.  
  
“I’m not.” A shrug, one-shouldered, sitting up. “Being brave. I’ve been crying in your arms.”  
  
“You—”  
  
“No, that’s not what I meant.” A sigh; James shakes hair out of his eyes, after. Michael wants to help; is slightly too late, but runs his hand through the exuberant waves anyway. He does love James’s hair.  
  
“I meant…I’m not doing this for you. Or, well, I’m doing it for us, I suppose, so yes, I am doing it for you too. But it’s about us. Being able to have this. I want this, and that’s…I don’t know. Honest. Like the crying.”  
  
“You can use me to cry on any time,” Michael says, and touches his cheek, one dried line of salt and water. “I’m here.”  
  
“I know,” James says, and leans into the touch. “I know.” And Michael holds him, in the velvety quiet, after.  
  
It’s not his place to say the words he wants to, to ask the question on the tip of his tongue. They’ve not been together that long, not really; James still sometimes looks surprised when Michael holds his hand or kisses him in public, as if unconvinced that Michael can mean it, can feel this way, can want him.  
  
They’ve had one discussion, not quite a fight, about that wanting: Michael’d argued that he didn’t _have_ to have experienced sleeping with any other men, that he’s not going gay for James’s sake or whatever that ridiculous phrase is, that he wants James because he’s _James_ , crossword puzzles in the morning and Star Trek quotes on film sets and unhesitating generous kindness, regardless of physical attributes, though he very definitely loves James’s physical attributes too. James had stopped the argument, at that, to kiss him senseless.  
  
But this _is_ still new, in so many ways. He doesn’t have the right to push, on this one.  
  
But he loves James. So maybe he does. He can’t not try.  
  
“I thought…I was thinking,” he begins, cautiously; the blue eyes look up at him, guileless and trusting, so that’s probably a good start. “Have you…are you…have you ever  thought about…talking to anyone, or…”  
  
“Counseling?” James doesn’t sound offended, at least. “Yes, actually. I have. Tried, I mean, not only thought about it.”  
  
“You…have?”  
  
“Well, once or twice. Two different psychologists; only met with the second one once, because frankly she wanted to come over to my flat and said she’d need to get in bed with me to ‘observe me sleeping’—” Those expressive fingers sketch the quotation marks in the air, wry with the distance of time; Michael, angry on James’s behalf, says, “Who was that, then,” and James shakes his head. “It’s fine, I just didn’t go back…and the next film came along, anyway, and I didn’t have the time. Didn’t want the headlines. Moderately Famous Actor Cracking Up, and all that…”  
  
“Moderately famous _hell_ ,” Michael grumbles, indignant, “don’t do that,” because he wishes James _wouldn’t_ do that, wouldn’t dismiss himself so easily every time, and he can’t say that either, not without those painfully blue eyes glancing away from his. “That first one, though. You went more than once? Did it…help?”  
  
“Oh…” James wobbles a hand from side to side. “Did it fix anything, no. He told me it was likely linked to post-traumatic stress, or general anxiety disorder; asked me if I had either of those. I said no. He suggested trying to get to the root of my trauma, or, if I would keep insisting I hadn’t got any trauma, meditation. And possibly sugar.”  
  
Michael, failing to process all these terrifying words at once, catches hold of the last one. “Sugar?”  
  
“Well…there’s some sort of theory, nothing confirmed apparently, that people with low blood sugar’re more susceptible to, y’know. Night…terrors. Recurrent negative dreams. What I’ve got, anyway.”  
  
“Sugar,” Michael echoes.  
  
“Just a theory.” James shrugs. “An excuse to eat chocolate chips by the handful before bed, honestly.”  
  
“Does that help?”  
  
“Not so I’ve noticed.”  
  
“Maybe you need bigger handfuls.” Or better food choices. Something with more carbohydrates. He doesn’t know that much about hypoglycemia, but he’ll learn.  
  
“I actually don’t think—”  
  
“I’ve sort of got big hands. Long fingers.” A demonstrative wiggle, to make the point. “These could hold a lot of chocolate.” This gets a smile; Michael feels like the hero of the universe, for that instant.  
  
“Really only a theory. Correlation, not causation. Not proved. But you can feed me chocolate in bed if you’d like; I’m hardly going to say no…” James takes his hand. Laces their fingers together. “I love you.”  
  
“I’m calling room service.”  
  
“Oh, really—”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“You don’t have to—”  
  
“If you don’t pick something, I’m ordering everything.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“And also I love you. If I didn’t say it back. I meant it. I always mean it.” He’s holding James’s hand in one of his, the one that’s not clutching the elegant leatherbound hotel information book. He’d turned the closest lamp on, getting up; the marigold gleam of it wanders through James’s hair, and pauses to gild the hint of ginger stubble with inviting light.  
  
“If this isn’t—I mean, no matter what—I’ll feed you anyway, but if there is something else—” There might be. He looks into those sapphire eyes, as they find his. Thinks about perilous canyons, beneath ocean waves. He knows James doesn’t do well with feeling abandoned, not with that childhood, that man who’s never been a father, and isn’t repression part of post-traumatic stress, sometimes?  
  
“You mean if I suddenly discover any deep dark horrific secrets of my past?” He can _hear_ the eye-roll, fond and entertained and a tiny bit grateful beneath that. “You’d want me to tell you all about it?”  
  
Michael sets the hotel-book down, very deliberately. Takes both of James’s hands. Squeezes, until those beautiful eyes stop blinking at the sudden change of direction and come back to his. “Yes. I would.”  
  
James blinks again, says, very softly, “Oh,” and then squeezes back.  
  
Michael’s heart all at once feels larger. Almost too big for his chest, too full of love and amazement and every other damn emotion to fit.  
  
Or maybe that’s just how James makes him feel. Like he wants to leap tall buildings in a single bound, or burst into song and tap-dance on street corners, or gather all the chocolate in the world and lay it at James’s feet if it’ll make those beloved eyes smile.  
  
Like he wants to see them smile for the rest of his life. Nightmares and crossword puzzles, sunlight and freckles, comforting arms in the dark and James looking up with that slow kindling grin, the one that promises imminent adventures in more enormous beds or accommodating showers.  
  
“I love you,” James says, and Michael fumbles out, tripping over words, “If I wanted to ask you something,” and James raises both eyebrows, still naked, under the antique hotel lamplight. “Yes?”  
  
“If I wanted to ask you,” Michael says, “if I could—if I could order room service for you forever, and hold you, when you need it, or even when you only want it—if I could be your—you said pistachio ice cream, earlier, and I love you, and oh god this isn’t coming out at all right, I’m so sorry—”  
  
“Michael,” James whispers, eyes huge, “are you—are you asking…”  
  
“I’m not—I mean, not exactly, I know we’ve never even talked about—it’s too soon, I know it is, I know you’ve probably not—but if you ever would think about it. I think I’m asking if you would ever think about being married to me?”  
  
James stares at him, eyes like sea-depth saucers, and Michael remembers to breathe in once and then forgets again, at that hesitant little lip-lick.  
  
“Michael,” James breathes again. “You—” and then abruptly laughs, clear as starlight, amazed and weightless. “Yes.”  
  
“…yes? Wait—yes, you would think about it?” He’s still holding both sturdy freckled hands; when his grip tightens, James laughs again. “…really?”  
  
“Not only would,” James tells him, and leans closer, so their noses nearly bump, so that he can feel each word against his lips. “I _have_ thought about it. Being married to you.”  
  
“You….have?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“Pistachio ice cream _forever_ ,” Michael promises, heartfelt and giddy, yanking James into his arms, “always, every night, before bed,” and James says, through all the laughter, through Michael’s lips finding his, “I love you, too.”

  
_I've told the stars you're my only love_  
 _I want to love you tenderly_  
 _those same bright stars in heaven above_  
 _know now how sweet sweethearts can be_  
 _listen to me, hear what I say_  
 _our hearts can be nearer each day_  
 _hold me, darling_  
 _listen closely to me…_


End file.
